


Bound

by Paian



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: 1000-3000 words, BDSM, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-31
Updated: 2005-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-03 11:17:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was just that Daniel would never let Jack hold him, after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bound

It was just that Daniel would never let Jack hold him, after.

What they did, in Jack's basement, would have looked like punishment if anyone else could have seen it. Jack had made certain they couldn't. Foundation was thick, nothing but earth for yards around it; ceiling and walls were acoustically and thermally insulated.

What they did, in Jack's basement, whenever Daniel came over with that soulless look in his eyes, _should_ have been punishment. That would have made some kind of psychological sense. Expiation, catharsis -- something. But it wasn't.

What happened afterwards ... what never happened afterwards -- that was the punishment. Of him, and of Daniel. Jack accepted it as less than he deserved and no more than he could take.

Afterwards, he propped Daniel upright in the shower, soaped him, rinsed him, dried him. Applied cream up the back of him, rubbed Tiger Balm into strained muscles, spritzed numbing throat medication into his open mouth because Daniel's hands were too loose and shaking to grasp the bottle, much less lift and aim and pump it. Palmed cream into the soft flesh between Daniel's legs, onto Daniel's nipples, slow careful presses into abused skin. Smoothed cream into Daniel's lips, and onto his wrists and ankles. He never left bruises -- he was too good, he'd learned too well, for very different applications -- but he checked anyway, a thorough visual inspection, and he'd check again in the morning.

Daniel stood stoically through it all. Hating every moment of it. Hating every soothing touch.

If Jack crossed the line, if Jack's fingers gentled too much, if care became tenderness or one single stroke a caress, Daniel would fight free of him and be gone. He always saved enough strength for that.

"You're tired," Daniel said, to Jack's reflection in the mirror.

"Doesn't matter," Jack said.

"This isn't fair, Jack. This wasn't in your job description. I can pay for this. There are places. Discreet."

Jack _was_ tired. He was deeply weary of this argument. They hadn't had it out loud for months. That didn't make him any less tired of it. "My choice," he droned. "Not putting you in strangers' hands. This is the only safe place. I'm the only person alive who's guaranteed not to leak this to your employers." The same old list, the same old reasons. Pointless. But sometimes Daniel insisted on this dance.

"Jack ... it's bad for you."

That was new. Jack's snort was an act of bravado. "Getting off is bad for me? When I mop, it'll be as much my come as yours."

"That's what I mean." Daniel was leaning on the sink. He should have looked gray and haggard. A voice like that, a toneless tone like that, came out of people who were drained, shot, beat. But Daniel was flushed. His body glowed.

"Pavlovian conditioning to fetishize pain? A bondage kink I'll never shake off?"

"Lack of human contact."

That cut too close. Jack ground down on rage, pain, crushed it into a gravelly abrasive concentration deep in his gut. "How about you let me worry about that?" He reached around the door for the soft flannels Daniel would sleep in, up in his bed, while he sat on the couch and stared at cold blue flickering light until it iced him clean and numb inside.

"You won't," Daniel said, to the sink. "You'll let it kill you and you'll never say a word."

That almost made Jack laugh. He'd died six years ago. He was alive because of Daniel.

Daniel pushed away from the sink, held up a hand to belay Jack preparing to dress him. "I'll get therapy," he said.

Jack was deeply shocked. Then he was angry. He'd never met a shrink he'd trust within a mile of Daniel now. Letting MacKenzie have charge of Daniel was a mistake he wouldn't repeat. A shrink you could outsmart was no damn good to you, and there was no one smarter than Daniel. What they did here kept Daniel going. It had worked for a long time. Don't mess with success. The best a shrink could do was crack Daniel open. There'd be no putting him back together again, then.

Acid gravel churning in the depths of his gut, Jack said mildly, "That what you want?"

"No," Daniel said. "But maybe it's a compromise we could live with."

"This _is_ the compromise we can live with." Jack leaned down to give the back of Daniel's knee a push, make him lift the leg like a horse at a farrier's, so he could pull the leg of the flannels past Daniel's foot. Daniel groped the sink for balance and allowed himself to be dressed. It was unusual for him to still be standing at this point. Jack worried, a little, that it meant he hadn't done his job this time.

_Not a job_, he reminded himself. A choice. What he chose to give Daniel, because he knew what he was doing, because he couldn't have him going somewhere else. But he had to be thorough, because no matter how Daniel had promised, Jack didn't trust him not to find someone he could pay to finish the job.

It had taken years for his infatuation with Daniel to become sexual. The first year, the second year, when Daniel was young and slim and eager and open, before he'd been torqued one too many times by bereavement, torture, sarcophagi, horror, unremitting stress, drugs and zat blasts and guilt and hatred and failure, Jack had only wanted to throw arms around him, hug him close, feel the heartbeat against his chest, breathe the scent of him. Let go with him, laugh with him. _Make love to him_, he'd realized one day, and then he'd known.

By then that had been the least of it.

He couldn't live without Daniel.

Daniel raised his head slowly and looked at Jack in the mirror again while Jack reached around him to tie the drawstring of the pants at his waist. "Someday I'm going to ask you to do it," he said, in a very low voice.

A deep, glacial terror froze Jack's movements only for a moment. "Cross that bridge," he said, snugging the slipknot. "Like I told you. You'll find out when you ask me, not before."

"I already know the answer. It needs to be a different answer, Jack."

_It needs to be a different question!_ "You want your answer, Daniel?" Jack stepped back, out of reach. No longer close enough to catch Daniel if he swayed, sagged, fell. "Fine. Here it is: When you go, we both go."

Daniel flinched. It was very slight; it was exactly the way he flinched when a clamp went on. Knowing it was there in Jack's hand, knowing it was going to go on, knowing he wouldn't like it, knowing he would.

Nobody else had this power over Daniel. It was the only form of bondage that Daniel couldn't stand, and so it was the best one, the perfect one; and it was the only kind that Jack would never release him from. It was the only way he could hold Daniel in this world.

It was the only way Daniel would let Jack hold him, after.


End file.
